The harbor.

She has to get to the water before they catch up to her. Next to her, an animal screams as the world erupts into anarchy.

Dark cresting waves of seawater crash against the salt-eroded seawalls in continuous motion, the sunlight of a ravishingly hot day blasting down over the world and adding to the dryness present within it. The streets crunch with layers of airborne salt and ash as boots twist, stepping over them in a sideways pattern. Turning ankles weave over and around the loose debris scattered across the road as metal strikes metal, acting as the heartbeat of an intricate dance. Smoldering bricks and chipped stones lie scattered all around, and the smoke rises up high past the belfries of the city, made out of stonework covered in peeling, off-white plaster. Bronze bells ring out high atop the towers of the harbor, as claps of thunder crack the air above the screams and shouts below. Ships of war sail across the coast, catastrophic salvos launching toward the shoreline — towers and houses erupt in violent explosions as the magical payloads strike. People run and scream — some from and some toward war — blades and metal clashing everywhere as troops stream out of docked landing boats, the waves and waves of encroaching soldiers making contact with the region’s guard. The beaches are ablaze with magical fire, and flames rise all around the city, stretching upward as if trying to reach the midday glow shining above them — as if they all strived to shine as brightly as it. From these shines cast long shadows in all directions. The longest shadow of all of these casts out particularly far and wide as the girl that it belongs to spins around, the base of the blade of the fine rapier in her hands catching the hooked end of a halberd that had pressed itself toward her back, only just catching its spear-pronged tip a feather’s touch beyond the fabric of her cloak that serves as her only layer of exterior armor above her traveling clothes.

— Acacia’s head spins back forward, her eyes going wide and she dives to the side, letting go of her blade behind her back and rolling as the area not ten feet from where she was standing a second ago explodes violently. A roar fills the air that overpowers everything. A cannonball from the ships of the line out in the harbor blasts into the street. Shrapnel and rubble fly in all directions as the world roars with war, just as she tucks herself into her cloak and lands behind a broken wall. As she rolls, she clutches something tightly against her core with her free hand, shielding it as best she can from any damage.

Everything goes quiet for a second as her ears catch nothing but the ringing inside of them as dirt crumbles down from above, the plaster of the nearby house crackling and dropping to her feet at the same time as a bent, burnt piece of her sword just so happens to land next to her cover. It’s destroyed. A tethered animal inside an open stall next to her — an anqa — screams and pulls on its leather bindings as everything around it crumbles.The dust and debris from the explosion settle, and the post-explosion silence holds the air for only just a brief moment. The bipedal, feathered animal that is twice her size claws at the hay below it, yanking its head around from side to side as it panics because of the chaos.

Acacia waits a moment, rising back up as she looks out, seeing that the man she was just fighting has been forced by the wayward cannon blast to leave his wholeness and become two and then some pieces of man instead. Looking down in her arms, she looks at the carefully wrapped, wooden chest that she’s holding onto — the whole reason for them being here this far in the south. Her prize is hardly larger than a jewelry box.

Soldiers of two banners stream down the roads through the smoke of the explosion, clashing immediately in the smoldering crossing, not leaving breath’s time before the first blood spills. Both factions carry the banner of a white sea hawk, but one tattered banner is gold, and the hawk is shown to fly westward. The other banner that comes from the ocean-spanning attackers is royal purple; the hawk on it flies eastward.

Of all the poor timing that she chose to enter the southern nation to get this thing… It looks like she’s ended up stuck in the middle of an explosive civil war between regional separatists and loyalists to the crown. The southern nation isn’t involved in the hostilities of her own kingdom with the enemy — they’ve instead chosen neutrality, given their turbulent internal politics that don’t allow them any expenses in regard to exterior focus.

Acacia looks at the soldiers of the nation’s crown, wearing their purple tabards. They've come from the harbor, so she has to get past them. The only way out of this mess is through the harbor, where they've agreed to meet. Acacia looks around herself, clutching her bundle tightly. Past the bloodshed, up on the rooftops across from here, she catches a glimmer of white peeking through an open balcony down toward her.

As the two factions clash, with dozens of soldiers fighting in the smoldering streets, another group sees her — a group that is separate from the two fighting armies. They do not wear armor or carry banners of either nation. Instead, they’re well dressed in ruby clothes of the faith, ornately so, with light garb and layered cloaks. Flat, wide-brimmed crimson hats adorn their heads, marked with single white feathers.

Damn! They’ve finally caught up to her, the people who were guarding her newest treasure. She got stuck here in this mess for too long.

One of them, standing at the forefront, whistles. The troop of red robe wearing priests push her way through the melee, swiping this way and that as they indiscriminately cut through men of any manner who are blocking their way.

Turning away, Acacia runs to the side, leaping over the stall fence and in next to the panicked animal that kicks out her way with a strong, taloned foot that hits the stall wall as she dodges it. The structure breaks, the force of the animal’s kick tearing the fence clean away and crashing it out into the burning street. Grabbing a handful of its feathers, she throws a leg over the bucking, screaming animal. Her fingers wrap around the leather straps as smoke fills the stall. “Stop! Thief!” yells a man draped in ruby fabric as he pulls out a long, elegant silver sword from his sheathe, moving toward the stall and preparing to plunge the blade forward.

 

 

“Run,” says Acacia into the animal's ear, her words echoing out over and over within the frame of the magic as everything all around them slows for a moment. A ripple casts out from her body as the spell she just cast takes effect, strands of distorted color arching out like lashing worms that grab hold of everything they can reach — walls, legs, and fire itself — the distortion that spans between them like the body of a net washing over her thin frame and the animal that she sits on. The colors of everything within this rapidly expanding space are fully drained, black and white taking hold of the coastal war, drowning out every tinge of gold and ruby blood as the void magic distorts everything. The leather tethers snap as the knife she pulled from her belt cuts through their tension.

Everything from the movement and the sounds to the sensation of the heat of blazing fires crawls to a slow halt. Time itself has slowed to a crawl. A gloved hand below a ruby sleeve, holding a silver blade, slowly lunges her way as the animal — spared from her distortion of everything that exists — blasts forward, screaming a wild cry as it leaves the distortion with what must appear to be terrifying speed. The anqa crashes into a pair of fighting soldiers, screeching and flapping its wings wildly as it wildly scrambles with her on its back. It flaps its wings, stomping in agitation and confusion as it runs through fires and over bodies, diving from side to side as it weaves through the melee and past arrows that hang in the air like stringless ornaments.

Acacia looks behind them as they go, unprepared soldiers unable to stop their sudden stampede as the anqa runs straight toward the remaining troop of ruby-clad soldiers who are after her specifically. Everything is a blur as another explosion rings out, and the building to their right is collapsing as cannon fire from the harbor breaks apart another fortification. Half of the debris catapult violently through the air; the other half freezes as it catches inside of her spell — moving only with a tepid torpor. Holding the reins as they charge toward the red priests, preparing a wall to stop them, Acacia yanks the leather tethers to the left, guiding the anqa straight into the wall of the house next to them. The animal kicks a powerful leg onto the wall, its massive talons digging in through the exterior plaster and into the brickwork below as it kicks off of the wall from its sprint, leaping over the heads of the inquisition.

“Chicory!” shouts Acacia as they fly into the air for a brief second, flying over the rising heads of the pursuers. The princess in a foreign nation swings out her arm, throwing the small bundle she’s holding as far as she can, her legs clamping down around the animal’s body as hard as she can make them do so, so that she isn’t sent flying off and away.

The little box flies through the air, flying toward the speck of white up on a balcony that she had seen before. The balcony door opens, the priestess standing inside of the house leaping out and catching the flung treasure as Acacia’s anqa lands behind the red priests, the anqa blasting off down the street, weaving through teams of unprepared or distracted soldiers. The distortion of time fades, and everything erupts into delayed madness.

She looks behind herself, watching as a red-clad man gives in an order. Half of the troops run down after her, the others breaking down the door of the house Chicory was inside of.

But the priestess is already gone.

Acacia whips the reins, the anqa diving to the side as the road next to her erupts with magic, smoldering brickwork flying everywhere.

 

---

 

 

The priestess dives through a window, leaving the abandoned house, her high-laced boots slapping against the terracotta tiles of the rooftops she’s dropped down onto. Whistling comes from behind her, together with the sound of breaking doors as the pursuers make their move.

She tsks, looking straight ahead as she runs as fast as she can, jumping from rooftop to rooftop as red-clad inquisitors run after her. The whistling cuts the air from the heavy explosions that land all around the region. As she leaps, jumping again across an alley, her eyes scan the cityscape for a brief second, looking at the mass of craters coming into sight everywhere as continuous barrages land from the sea.

— Out of the corner of her eyes, she sees a tower full of crossbowmen aiming her way, following the pointing finger of a white-handed glove.

She lands, pressing her free hand to the tiles of a rooftop, several of them sliding down below her, having come loose. They fall and smash into the ground below.

 

 

Immediately, a wall materializes out of nowhere, projecting next to her. Concentrated particulates form together in the corners, a sheet of glass-like structure shooting between them in an instant as she runs. A volley of crossbow bolts cracks into the shield that came not a second too late as she continues her escape, running toward the bell tower of a chapel several houses away.

How in the world did she get into this mess? Chicory narrows her eyes, running straight toward the tower, slipping a few times as she moves as the loose tiles of the roof below her fall away, crossbow bolts shattering the tiles all around her as archers fire one volley after another.

— Chicory stops, sliding and almost falling as she catches her balance.

The priestess looks down below herself at the drop and at the church tower across from her, which is too far and high to jump to.

She looks behind herself as the pursuing troop of crimson-cloaked inquisitors begins to catch up. Thick silver chains dangle around their necks, proudly displaying the sigils of their faith. Clutching the little box to her chest, she looks at them as they approach.

“Sister, you betray your faith,” says the lead pursuer, slowly walking toward the priestess, who wears a necklace of her own — of gold — around her neck. Whereas she is a priestess of the Holy-Church — the religious power of the north — these people are inquisitors of the Orthodox Church, a separate religious entity that holds power in the southern regions of the world. Both churches accept the existence of one another, but only in friendly contention. “Return what you have taken,” he orders, holding out a hand and taking a step closer. Chicory’s boot slides back an inch, her heel dangling over the edge and the deathly drop behind her. “And we will see to it that your remains are delivered to your covenant.”

Chicory’s eyes scan the area.

“No,” replies the priestess. “My faith lies in the one and only crown,” she says, taking a step back. The man reaches forward, stopping the others behind him from lunging after her. She spins around as she falls down to her death and throws the box as hard as she can; it flies across the street toward the bell tower.

— A net casts itself out from behind a pillar in the tower, the small box landing inside of it. A blue-haired person who was inside the church tower takes the little container as she grabs the bell’s thick ropes, sliding down the inside of the belfry as she makes an immediate escape.

The inquisitor, reaching the edge, looks as she vanishes and then down toward the street below, where he expects to see the dead priestess.

Instead, he sees a series of glowing barriers — the same projected walls as before that blocked the arrows — dozens of them spanning through the air like a walkway as she runs down along them, making her escape below the rooftops.

“AFTER THEM!” yells the young man with the feathered hat, as cannon fire ruptures the world all around them.

 

---

 

 

Chambermaids and servants run down the many corridors in panic, their thin cloth shoes crunching over shards of broken glass as they move, running toward safer areas of the complex as walls crumble and fires rise toward the beams of the ceiling. With precise, measured, and unbothered steps, the blue-haired elven woman drops her hood as she moves counter to their direction, walking straight ahead toward the massive entrance of the church. The gigantic oak doors already stand ajar from a blast that threw them off of their hinges. Soldiers of both factions fight inside the holy sanctuary, fires and flames rising up stacked pews that had served as barricades — now failed. The blood and banners of many fall below the icon of eminence that presides over the stonework house of the gods as metal and the pressing of bodies strike into one another.

Red flashes of fabric move, inquisitors collecting by the entrance as a group of servants, as well as priestesses and pastors of the faith, run out past them and into safety. They get ready to stop anyone from leaving, but lock directly toward the sight of the blue-haired woman heading directly their way instead.

“That’s her!” yells a man. “Stop!” yells another inquisitor, his hands glowing with a shine of iron gray magic as the ground around the blue-haired elf shakes, the stones below her rattling and rumbling from the effects of the binding spell he is casting. A second later, the broken, scorched stonework all around Junis shoots up, clasping shut firmly around her legs and waist like a snapping bear-trap. She, imprisoned, stands there idly, holding the box against her chest, a fully blank expression on her face as the people in red surround her. All around the church, the battle continues indifferently to the scene as royalists and rebels clash with blades.

One of the inquisitors reaches in to snatch the stolen box from the trapped elf.

— His hands go straight through the container and her body, as if touching nothing at all, as if she were a ghost.

The ‘elf’ trapped inside the spell flickers and fades, like a spire of candlelight that has had a finger pressed through it.

“…Huh?” he mutters, looking around in confusion for a second toward the other inquisitors. Realizing this, he immediately spins around. “AN ILLUSION!” yells the inquisitor, staring out of the front door that they had just come in through.

 

---

 

 

The real elf, running with the real box stowed inside of her pouch, breaks off from the group of priestesses she had run away with through the front door, straight past the inquisitors — the hood of her servants’ clothes, which had of course also been stolen — falling down, letting her long ears protrude freely out from the side of her head as she navigates the alleys.

— The elf stops, the pathway in front of her exploding as a cannonball strikes it. A house begins to collapse, rubble and debris fly in all directions.

Quickly, she turns in through another house, pressing open the door — the make of lock being a kind she’s seen a thousand times before during her duties easily gives way with a quick shimmy and a concentrated shoving of her shoulder. A local woman hiding inside the house screams, grabbing her child as the strange elf barges into their kitchen, the intruder not stopping as she runs through the room toward a window on the other side that she opens and leaps out of. Junis lands on the street on the other side, with smoke rising in all directions from the city. Somewhere out at sea, a ship erupts into a new sunrise as its ammunition hold is struck by a coastal barrage, sending a plume up toward the sky that makes the clouds above indistinguishable from the ones rising to them from the ocean below.

This should have been enough time for the distraction. By now, Acacia should have made it to the water.

The elf looks behind herself as she runs, breaking out into a market square that is clogged, blocked by an array of carriages and carts that have crashed into one another — each blocking the road for the other in their attempts to leave the city.

— The city around her quakes, people screaming and running as several carriages begin to tip over from a quake, their wheels and axles snapping as they flip. The houses around the square begin to shake from some external force as a powerful spell rocks the city's foundations. Junis runs, weaving her way through the mess. Something buzzes in her mind then, however, her instincts scream at her to dodge. So she does, pressing her back against an overturned carriage. The wood of the carriage hammers out against her back as a dozen strikes hit against it from above. Metal clambours and rattles as a hard rain hits the stonework of the streets all around her.

Junis looks, lifting her head from her covered position, at the array of swords that lie scattered over the ground — long, elongated rapiers lie strewn about, as if someone had perplexingly chucked an armory crate at her. Dozens of them fly down from the ground, needling into the cobblestone streets and into anyone who was still there. She can only assume that a cannonball struck a weapon’s transport, throwing them all around the area.

Confused, Junis jumps up to continue running.

“Don’t -!” snaps a voice from immediately behind her. The elf freezes in place, slowly turning her head to look at the overturned carriage. Standing atop it is a man in red, his brown gloved hand held out toward her. In his other hand is a thin rapier that is of the same make and mark of those that lie strewn around her feet. He’s a scrawny, thinner version of the other inquisitors — like a boy who had just become a man in terms of years alone, but not in the growth of his body just yet. “- move,” finishes the inquisitor of the Orthodox Church in a voice that is almost feigned in its groughness, as if he were trying to sound deeper and harsher than his natural inflection would allow. His hand is aimed out toward her, another spell ready to be cast. Junis’ eyes scan the area as she stands there, frozen. He whistles, and one after the other, more of them appear from all sides.

They’ve caught her.

“You’ve all given us quite the run,” says the inquisitor, the long, white feather in his blowing wildly to the side as the explosion of sea-cast cannon fire erupts not far from him. He doesn’t flinch from the sound or the broken wood and metal shards cast all around the area. “But it’s over now,” he says. “May the gods have mercy on your soul,” he says, nodding his head. Strands of pitch black hair, coiled in tight, oily serpentine streaks, hang out from below his covering. “Retrieve it,” he orders — almost perplexingly, given his age, which hints at his presumed lack of rank amongst his peers. The young man looks down at her, his hand preparing a spell to launch at her the second they recover the stolen container.

“- Think fast!” yells Junis, throwing the treasured box as hard as she can. All eyes follow it, people in red screaming and reaching after it as it launches through the air.

 

---

 

The young man, in particular, screams in surprise as the woman chucks the little box straight toward him. He fumbles as he catches it, stumbling back over the carriage and falling down onto his rear. Noticing that he and it are both safe, he sighs, looking down at the wooden container. “I have it…” he sighs in deep, calm relief, holding it up to show the other inquisitors. “I have it,” he affirms, standing back up and looking toward the blue-haired elf.

Another man grabs the blue-haired elf from behind.

— His arms wrap straight through her, grabbing nothing but air.

Another illusion.

She must have cast it while the box was flying through the air and escaped. Such quick thinking, she’s quite a survivor. But it doesn’t matter. They can catch her later. What matters most is that…

The young inquisitor opens the small box, looking inside of it.

“…It's empty…” he says. The others look his way. “- IT'S EMPTY!” screams the inquisitor, chucking the empty container down to the ground, the wooden lid and container breaking from the force of his throw. His eyes follow the shade of blue that escapes from the plaza down a street to their right as he prepares his next continued order to chase her down. She’s heading toward the city's outskirts. “No…” he mutters to himself a moment later, after his team begins to move. They all stop, looking back at him. His eyes go wide as he realizes the chase they have been led on. “…No…” mutters the lead inquisitor, his eyes turning away from the elf, who almost seems to slow down and stop in the distance, looking back toward them to see if she really was being followed or not.

She's not running away. She's leading them. She wants them to chase her.

They’ve been led. This was a ruse. This was all a ruse.

The box… he looks down at it. The box has been empty this entire time. The northern priestess, the blue-haired elf… they were both distractions. The first girl… the springtide-haired girl, has it — the girl who escaped on the anqa, the one who fled toward…

“- THE HARBOR!” yells a voice from the side, one of his men pointing toward the bay, as a spire of radiating purple light shoots up toward the air like the spell of an ancient master of legend, cutting through the anarchy of the urban battlefield. All around the city, the warfare and violence stop as a single, unifying blastwave ruptures through the streets. Glass and walls shatter with far more force than any cannon blast or magical attack could muster. A wave of blindingly bright raw power casts over the city, tinging the hues of every bloodstained face and terrified pair of eyes with an overwhelming wash of royal lavender.

“…Impossible…” he mutters to himself as the radiant light intensifies, becoming a blindingly bright shine that washes over him wholly, and everything red on his body and clothes loses its vibrant touch from the heat of that eruption, which steals the sound of his words as well.

Such power, such force. No man can do that. There's only...

— But that’s -

A wave of white launches over the turmoiled city, washing it away as if a tsunami had roared over it from the ocean, carrying with it the light of a world-erasing sunrise.

 

---

 

 

What does it mean to be someone?

The ocean roars as the water crashes back — the force of the magical blast that emanates out of his core reversing the thrashing of the waves and sending them back out to sea. The shoreline clears, the water retreats for leagues as if a tsunami were to come, and the ships on the horizon rise and fall as the great disturbance moves their masses. Soaring cannon fire from already prepared salvos flies above their heads, eruptions blasting out from the city and from the glassed sands all around him as Sir Knight stands there on the stonework of the harbor. A massive suit of black armor contrasts both the azure ocean as well as the white-plastered city. His hands reach up toward the sky, holding firmly onto the shaft of a massive great-axe that is held aloft above his head — the metal weapon curves and folds inwardly, the hooked, jagged blade of the thing appearing like the flared snout of a war-scarred dragon.

What does it mean to have an identity that someone can point to and name?

“Cavaleiro!” screams a soldier, speaking the word 'knight' in the language of the southern nation. Hundreds of them surround him, swarming through the harbor this way and that way — soldiers of legions of both banners — purple and gold — have united in their terror of him even now in this moment of civil rebellion. “O Cavaleiro!”

— Sir Knight smashes the axe down toward the ground, the massive beam of negative energy that it had released toward the sky, hammering down at once at his feet as the edge of the metal sinks through rock as if nothing were there at all. A shockwave erupts out in all directions, with cobblestones and men flying as if one were as light as the other. Buildings collapse and ships in harbor — fallen to dry ground because of the retreated ocean — tip and fall toward the wet sands as the immeasurable shockwave moves even their significant steel and wooden masses. Banners of every color fly in all directions as the blastwave strikes out, their hues flying through the hot air like petals of springflowers that have now given way to the hot winds of a dry summer to come. Colors of every manner all streak past the black-knight — den schwarzen Ritter — reds of blood and golds of royal fabrics, greens of glassware, and blues of seawater — everything pulls in and around the air in that moment as havoc carries through the screaming world. The quake ruptures down a hundred streets from the harbor, shattering fragile things and breaking walls in all directions. People tumble over one another in an incoherent mess as he stands there alone between them all — a man without an identity other than what they have given him.

Or at least, that’s who he once was, in the time before this new life. He was an empty man, a man with no self-identified existence.

Dust cascades through the air, falling down all around them, together with a spray of ocean water that now begins to land again like rain from the clouds above — the likes of which have also been parted from the energy of the blast. A single hole streaks through the air and through the sky, as if a piece of it had been taken and consumed by a hunger that knows no ends.

— The yearning, the insatiable feeling that cannot be filled. This is the hunger of an identity that longs to be completed.

Sir Knight steps forward, the horrifying axe that is as large as a man hanging in his hands as he walks, his tattered cape billowing behind him as he moves. The ocean roars as if giving a voice to the monstrosity that walks the daylight, people all around screaming as the pushed back water of the ocean surges inland again now only a moment later. People scramble in all directions, clambering onto whatever they can as a great shadow looms over their heads. A wave, a manufactured tsunami, rushes back toward the port as the water, which was blasted away, now storms in to fill what was made empty.

Sir Knight stands there, lifting his head as the shadow hangs over him too, blood and gritted stone dripping from his weapon.

To have an identity means to have qualities that can be identified, obviously. These can be simple or more intricate. This is the presumed way of thinking.

However, it might just be the opposite, no? It might not be that having an identity allows one access to such qualities as differentiations. Rather, it might be these differentiations that make the identity.

What makes a man who he is?

His body, his features, his personality — everything can be boiled down to a single pinprick essence. From everything major, as listed, down to the minor, seemingly inconsequential details such as his favorite color or flavor. Everything that a person ascribes to themselves in order to create an identity as a being that is alive is another piece that gets put onto the shoulders of that creature. Having an identity is a burden, in a way. Being an individual is a burden. Needing to know who you are, what you are, and everything that comes cast in between the shadows of those two titanic questions is a task that most will spend their lives trying to answer, as if doing so would unlock a secret to being that none before them had ever known.

But the truth is, it just might not be that important — your identity. Are you a good man? Are you a bad man? And what happens to your identity if your version of yourself conflicts with what someone next to you sees you as?

Clever casters and priests establish barriers all around themselves — circular, half-spherical domes of magic — that they shield themselves and those near them beneath.

The wave crashes down over them, and Sir Knight stands there, the water of the ocean pressing through his armor — touching not a single bit of flesh or skin as the salt seeps through the gaps. He doesn’t move, but all around him, people are crushed and washed away by the wave that tears them toward the city or tears them back with a riptide out toward the ocean.

But he just stands there, watching like a statue beneath a drowned world, his eyes scanning the area in that strange, eerily slow moment of time as the ocean almost appears to have consumed the city, looking through the raging water and several glowing orbs — shields, that desperate, horrified faces do their best to maintain. Clustered together like prisons below the sea, the clusters of casters that remain do their best to hold their positions as the ocean consumes and takes what it wishes as the salt-laden water washes him clean.

The truth is that he has managed to find an identity now, in this new life of his. It is an identity that he likes and holds to be true. In the old life of his, he was unformed, shapeless, and empty. But in this new life he has fully accepted and embraced emptiness, he is a defined construct that exists not only within the minds of other people but also within his own mind.

Now, and only now, has he been able to answer the question of who he is with full honesty, with something more than a name — given to him at birth.

He's nobody at all.

The water recedes, and his empty visor rises as the wave pulls back, dragging with it a thousand bodies that claw and scream as the water steals them from the land. Weapons and armor all lie scattered, lost in the chaos. And in this same moment emerge shadows from him, seeping and leaking out in all directions, flowing toward these lost items like the roots of a mold, flowing along the ground until they touch some form of new substrate.

Upon contact, these shadows emerge from their flat plane, grabbing hold of shields, swords, lost helmets, and lost spears with fully formed hands and claws. Everything that has been cast aside or become forlorn, his power touches and connects with. From the ground emerge shapes — like people — silhouettes. The entities don whatever it is they hold onto, using it to keep some sort of coherent form. Hundreds of them emerge all around him, like demons rising from the graves of the dead, before immediately rushing forward toward the defensive lines of both factions. Soldiers made out of shadows fill every piece of lost armor and hold every cast-aside knife and lance, fighting as a new faction in the battle under his command. Even the armor from the bodies of the dead is stolen, as if by the hands of ghosts, as the possessions of the fallen rise from their corpses, lunging back into the fray as if possessed by the spirit of war.

Ahead of him glows that defensive line of magical barriers, the silhouettes of many visible behind them. But one man in particular steps forward past them and toward him — another man with an identity, like himself. Sir Knight stands there quietly on the harbor, nested within the protective formation of hundreds of his soldiers as this new man fights his way forward toward him. He can see it in this man's eyes; he can tell. He is someone who knows who and what he is. Sir Knight looks at the man, at the way he walks through the fights between men and their shadows, he looks at the way he holds his head and blade out at the ready — both assured and firm even in the face of the nightmare, even in the horror visible in the hundreds of eyes behind him that no longer dare approach den schwarzen Ritter, as the enemy from the East calls him. This new challenger is a knight-captain, given his insignia, and having breached the lines, he steps forward and prepares his stance for a fight against Sir Knight — a duel.

Sir Knight looks at the brave man with an identity, staring him down, and then lifts his massive axe into the air.

— Then, he stows it away inside his cloak. The strange, almost immaterial fabric swallows the metal implement as if he were submerging it in a pool of water. It vanishes into his storage now that he doesn’t need it anymore.

The mission is done.

This foreign captain and his identity, as important as it might be to him, are not relevant to Sir Knight right now. It’s time for them to leave this place.

A fresh scream cuts the air as a shadow rises over the brave stranger who had his desire for a one-on-one fight denied, a large, taloned foot stamping down onto the honorable captain’s back, kicking him gracelessly into the nearby rubble. Acacia’s anqa lands, the princess riding toward Sir Knight. The giant man looks at her as she approaches. Her hair has grown somewhat longer since they first met, and she has it pulled back into a short, finger’s long tail behind her head. Her skeleton and frame have filled out because of the food, medicine, and success they’ve gotten into her — but her eyes seem to fall in a little deeper because of that with every passing day. Her sickness — the Consumption — remains as always and continues to drain her strength, but she's been doing well for these last few days. The ocean air seems to be helpful in regards to her lungs, at least before all of the smoke.

“Sir Knight,” starts Acacia, looking at him with a cold expression that matches her dry tone. “I believe that I told you not to damage my future holdings,” she reprimands, looking down at him from her mount.

“Yes, your Majesty,” replies Sir Knight, holding his hand above where his heart should be. “You did.”

— A great thundering fills the air as wood and metal bend and snap. The main harbor complex next to them collapses, with people running in all directions as its support frame down in the water gives way.

Acacia stares at the freshly collapsing ruin before turning back to him with a loveless expression. “Such shoddy craftsmanship is not fitting for your reign, my Lady,” says Sir Knight sarcastically, holding out a hand to help her down. “The new one will be painted with colorful ducks,” he promises. “I will see to it myself.”

She sighs and takes hold of his massive fingers, swinging her legs over the animal.

“You’ve always got a smart answer, don’t you?” she asks sharply, shaking her head as her boots strike the ground. Acacia lifts her nose, digging through her pocket. “You might just make me like you at this rate, Sir Knight.”

He looks down at her, nodding once. “This is great news, considering that I’ve been inside of your body already,” he replies, looking at her stern gaze. “Wouldn’t want to have this be weird, or anythi-”

— There’s a dull thunk as her elbow strikes his metal stomach, not doing much of anything but causing Acacia pain for the effort she went through to do so. But she bites it down, pretending that everything is fine as she pulls out an object from her cloak — the object. Some seawater sloshes out of his still ringing armor.

“I’ve told you not to phrase it that way!” she barks at him. "Idiot."

This thing in her hands is why they’re here; this is why they had to make their move now. It wasn’t a part of the plan, but the rebellion gave them the perfect opportunity to take their chance.

“Speaking of people you like,” starts Sir Knight, lifting his gaze as a blue-haired elf breaks out of one street and a tanned priestess emerges from another — both of them escorted by shadowy soldiers in black uniforms, carrying pikes and lances as they fight their way through the battlefield toward the designated meeting spot, here.

“My Lady!” yells Chicory, rushing forward. She grabs Acacia, looking her over. “Are you alright?” she asks. “Did you get hurt?” asks the priestess immediately, her eyes going wide at seeing a tiny scratch on Acacia’s arm. “Hold still!”

Acacia pulls her arm away. “That’s fine, Chicory,” remarks Acacia dryly. “I do not care for your consistently feigned worrying,” she snaps, glaring at the woman, who keeps a prim, professional smile despite being reprimanded. Ever since the truth about Chicory being a spy for the royal family and the entire incident with Zero, the social situation has become somewhat… complicated. After a moment, Acacia sighs. “You did well. Thank you,” she says, as the priestess looks down at the object in the hands of the girl who wants to be a dark queen but secretly makes quacking noises by herself at night.

“SIR KNIGHT!” yells the blue-haired elf, sprinting their way and stumbling as she consistently tries to get ahead of the guard troop he had sent to escort her. “CHURCH!” she shouts.

“Junis,” greets Sir Knight, holding out his hands that catch her shoulders as she runs straight into him.

The frantic elf points back behind herself, gasping for air. “C-Church,” she repeats, her eyes shifting toward the trophy held tightly in Acacia’s fingers, despite everyone else's’ turning back behind Junis, toward the ruby blob emerging on the horizon.

Red.

A streak of ruby silhouettes gathers there, one of them in particular standing atop the rooftop of a harbor storage house. He's a younger man with a clean face. Even from all the way back here, Sir Knight can see that this young man of the Orthodox Church, too, has some sort of identity going on. He has a very forced, unhelpfully rigid posture that hints to his acting. Curious. He begins channeling a spell. The sky above their heads begins to glow, as if stars were forming in the middle of the afternoon.

“They’re a persistent bunch,” says Acacia, tsking. “Sir Knight, I believe it is time for us to take our leave,” she remarks.

Sir Knight looks back at her for a second, and then toward the approaching inquisition, who easily and indifferently cut their way through soldiers of every banner in order to get to them — the retrieval of what has been stolen being their highest priority. “I don’t know,” he says. “I think the ocean air is good for you, you know?” he asks. “It’s really bringing out your calmer side.”

“- SIR KNIGHT!” yells Acacia as a glow covers the beachhead from atop the rubble. Above their head, a thousand rapiers dangle in the sky, forming together out of raw magic.

— The young man in red atop the pile of rubble casts out his hand, the air filling with metal in an instant as a thousand blades fly through the air, manifested from seemingly nowhere at all. Like a swarm of needles, they shoot straight toward them, plunging into bodies and stonework alike as they soar with unnatural force. The entire beachhead from one end of the kilometer to the other is pelted with the rain of the metal storm, hundreds of people screaming in horror — their voices all sounding similar enough to one another in their life's last horror, no matter what banner they fly.

Sir Knight grabs the edge of his cloak, swinging it around himself in one swooping motion, the fabric of the cape swallowing all of them whole.

Sir Knight, Acacia, and everyone else vanish in an instant into the fabric of the cloak, disappearing into the void that swallows them, leaving behind their wake a battlefield that is so truly full of horrors and anarchy that the story of what really happened here might not ever really be believed by anyone at all.

 

---

 

 

Acacia plummets through the void, through the shortcut between regions that Sir Knight has created through the use of his traveling soldiers, who have been spreading out far and wide across many nations this entire time.

And as she falls through that seemingly eternal darkness — a pool with no identity — her eyes glimmer and shine with a light that comes from nowhere else but within as her fingers caress a piece of cold metal. It’s an artifact and a very old thing that they’ve come a long way for. They’ve planned so much, worked so hard, and traveled so far, and now… here it is, it's hers.

— Like it was always meant to be.

As she falls through the void, Acacia clutches the bent, mangled, and broken crown against her chest — a crown that had been under the protection of the Ortodox Church, an old crown — an artifact of ancient history — that had belonged to the first king who lived in the first castle, who was eaten by the first monster that came before all other monsters.

— Zero.

 

 

Acacia’s greedy expression and star-lost eyes both break as next to her falls a screaming animal, the anqa kicking and flapping its wings as it drops in horror.

“WHY DID YOU BRING THE ANQA?!” screams Acacia out into the void, dodging as a massive talon — trying to grab on to anything at all — barely misses her.

“I brought you too, didn’t I?” asks Sir Knight’s voice, echoing all around her inside of empty infinity as they plummet and then fall out toward a vivid light that is the opening on the other side of the passage. Four people and one very terrified animal blast into a tiny, underground room that is clearly too small for all of them to fit in easily at once — all of them fighting and fussing for the very rare space that there is to be had in the palace of the heartless, grim queen to be.

— A damp, cold underground broom closet below a loud, busy adventurers’ guild, accessed only through a disgusting alleyway that smells of urine surprisingly more often during the day than at night.

Acacia, Junis, and Chicory all fight with one another as they’re crushed in between themselves and the walls that can be touched from any angle whatsoever — given their lack of distance. Sir Knight stands between them and the animal as a room divider, with one of them crushed against his back, the terrified anqa clawing and scratching at his front as he reaches for the little entry door that the massive, frantic animal is pressed against. He opens it, the immediate release of pressure allowing them all to spill out into the daylight at once.

A fat, dirty rat squeaks and runs away in terror, knocking over a pile of rotting garbage as it escapes down a filth-stained alleyway.

They're home.

 

 

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